Long Beach’s Charlie Gandy Featured in Bicycling Magazine

Former Mobility Coordinator Charlie Gandy loves showing off Long Beach. The beaming Texan has given tours to hundreds of elected officials, journalists, planners, transportation engineers and just about everyone else to show off some of Long Beach’s most notable infrastructure improvements: its bicycle boulevards, its protected bike lanes, its green sharrowed lanes and its Streetdecks (parklets with a private investment for the construction).

I was a participant in two of these rides back in 2011, and they were both great times and educational. Some of the treatments Long Beach was placing on its streets were pretty ground breaking, and other Southland cities are following the Beach’s lead.

And this month’s Bicycling Magazine takes note, with a feature story on Gandy’s rides and the impact they had in Long Beach. Jacqueline Itsines writes:

Gandy crafted the tour to showcase “alternatives to ugly.” The eight-mile ride has no hills and little traffic, intentionally cutting through residential side streets that parallel busier streets just a block away. The pack rolls at less than five miles per hour, making frequent stops along the way so that Gandy can show off the latest bike-friendly facilities, and even give local shopkeepers a chance to come out and discuss how Long Beach’s embrace of bicycling benefitted their businesses.

Damien is the executive director of the Southern California Streets Initiative which publishes Longbeachize, Streetsblog Los Angeles, and Santa Monica Next. Damien wins journalism awards, which is cool and surprising because he writes at a third grade level.